The worst AI piloted nations?

[ingosupercute]

Hello fellow V-arians. We all know starting positions can be pretty random, no two games are alike and the weirdest stuff can happen during any given round of Civ V. But when you play a lot of AI games, you will probably have noticed some nations always failing no matter what. What are your top 3 worst AI nations?

Mine are:
1. Brazil
No matter how often I have Brazil spawn in on my games, they are usually either the first or one of the first nations to get eliminated. I've only ever ONCE seen them make it past the classic era. Not sure why that was, but probably a combination of small continents and having spawned next to America, whose AI usually seeks to cooperate at first, with a common enemy to bond against. I couldn't really see because I spawned on another continent. However as soon as the colonization age began and we had discovered another Brazil got overrun super fast again by someone.

2. Mongolia
The Mongols always seem to not found many cities and instead funnel all resources into early warfare. Just that they use it against city states as their bonus dictates. Problem is that rubs all other AI civs the wrong way and because the Mongols loose lots of troups against the city states early on, they are easy prey and get eliminated during the middle ages.

3. The Kelts
Now, the Kelts usually stick around long in my AI games. However, except spreading their religion they do little else. They do not found many cities, their military is usually lacking, their technology starts falling behind others - they literally got zero impact on a round. Normally they just happily sit in their little corner of the world until someone decides they'd like to own said corner themselves, or the Kelts annoy someone diplomatically.

[76561198213095365]

Originally posted by Bfloo:

It is a glitch from an earlier game. He starts so passive, that when aggressive natures tone down late game, he goes off the charts aggressive because his value resets. The dev team at the time thought it was funny, so it became a feature.

Ironically, I had noticed once late in the game that Gandhi proposed a ban on producing more nukes, but I did not play along with that and I like it as well when other AI civilizations are afraid of me especially with that 500 turn limit. One of the few civilizations not afraid of me on the ten player map was Siam. However, Mongolia did fall early in the game to Siam and Siam also had the largest empire towards the end of game leaving me under the impression that Siam is not necessarily one of the weakest AI civilizations in the game.

[kensw]

With a great start location even the worst civ can do well.
With a Terrible start location even the best civs can fail.

[76561198213095365]

Originally posted by kensw:

With a great start location even the worst civ can do well.
With a Terrible start location even the best civs can fail.

Not always, because Assyria was on the corner of the map and much weaker than Siam as their only neighbor with a lot less cities than them as well, but Siam never declared war on them even once before the end of 500 turns despite them not sharing the same ideology from late in the game. Instead, Siam was more distracted with Mongolia and Ottoman Empire mostly. Assyria had a small empire, but surprisingly they were peaceful overall throughout the entire game who only declared war on Persia and Arabia which at that time they had very few cities left at that point and Assyria was not even close to them either. And so, basically AI Assyria played it smart and safe by never declaring war on Siam, because if they did Assyria could have fallen very easily to Siam.

[kensw]

HUH ???

[Bfloo]

Originally posted by kensw:

With a great start location even the worst civ can do well.
With a Terrible start location even the best civs can fail.

Add Monty as a neighbor to that horrible start and even the best civ is going down quick.

[76561198213095365]

Originally posted by kensw:

HUH ???

Assyria apparently started from a bad location on the Asian map because Siam had a lot more cities than Assyria, but Siam never declared war on them throughout the entire 500 turn game despite being neighbors with them and Assyria never foolishly declared war on Siam either. Ottoman Empire for example had hostile relations with Siam and had multiple wars with them, but Siam never actually captured their capital until the game was almost over which in theory might have been because of Ottoman Empire's great wall of China and combined that with the fact I never captured any of Ottoman Empire's cities either despite their long history of conflict with Siam. This means Assyria was safe from Siam throughout the entire gameplay despite starting from a bad location.

[kensw]

Originally posted by davidnoble1996:

Originally posted by kensw:

HUH ???

Assyria apparently started from a bad location on the Asian map because Siam had a lot more cities than Assyria, but Siam never declared war on them throughout the entire 500 turn game despite being neighbors with them. Ottoman Empire for example had hostile relations with Siam and had multiple wars with them, but Siam never actually captured their capital until the game was almost over which in theory might have been because of Ottoman Empire's great wall of China and combined that with the fact I never captured any of Ottoman Empire's cities either despite their long history of conflict with Siam. This means Assyria was safe from Siam throughout the entire gameplay despite starting from a bad location.

And you consider that a Success ? They Survived.

[76561198213095365]

Originally posted by kensw:

And you consider that a Success ? They Survived.

Better than losing their capital to Siam. I joined a few wars in Siam in going against the Ottoman Empire without me having to bribe Siam since they asked me first, but that was merely intended to distract the Ottoman Empire and Siam since I did not want the Siam empire to grow too fast and I was more specifically aiming for a Science victory anyway with my Babylonians instead of domination. Fortunately, Ottoman Empire was too distracted with Siam in their wars with them to go after any of my cities, but even without any real military help from friends Siam did well on their own against the Ottoman Empire.

[ingosupercute]

Personally, I'd argument there are different levels of failure:

a) Being eliminated. And the time of elimination. I'd not consider the state a failure anymore if they got rolled over after the industrial age ideology chaos turns the world upside down.

b) Not being eliminated, but surviving with only very few cities, a huge tech gap to average nation and basically only being around to cause political chaos and denounce people while no one bothered to finish that nation off completely.

[Bfloo]

Originally posted by ingosupercute:

Personally, I'd argument there are different levels of failure:

a) Being eliminated. And the time of elimination. I'd not consider the state a failure anymore if they got rolled over after the industrial age ideology chaos turns the world upside down.

b) Not being eliminated, but surviving with only very few cities, a huge tech gap to average nation and basically only being around to cause political chaos and denounce people while no one bothered to finish that nation off completely.

b could be a 'win' if a terrible start and a few debacles set you back. It could even be a set up to steal a diplo win.

[ingosupercute]

Originally posted by Bfloo:

Originally posted by ingosupercute:

Personally, I'd argument there are different levels of failure:

a) Being eliminated. And the time of elimination. I'd not consider the state a failure anymore if they got rolled over after the industrial age ideology chaos turns the world upside down.

b) Not being eliminated, but surviving with only very few cities, a huge tech gap to average nation and basically only being around to cause political chaos and denounce people while no one bothered to finish that nation off completely.

b could be a 'win' if a terrible start and a few debacles set you back. It could even be a set up to steal a diplo win.

Oh, you're right! But because I think that's a terrible system and want to see the entire game play out through the ages, I usually only have points victory activated. It leaves the AI to do whatever they please.

In Beyond Earth, which is running the same engine as Civ 5 with only very minor AI improvements, I usually have contact victory enabled instead. I think that one is more fair to everyone: No affinity required, random element of finding a progenitor signal, tech race to build a satellite, production race to build a beacon wonder, military/defense test when others declare war on you while the beacon has to power up (over 60 rounds on epic speed).

I kinda don't like the normal Civilization victory conditions in 5 and 6...

[76561198213095365]

Assyria might have been able to defend themselves against Siam to hold them off at least temporarily if need be, but they were clearly not in the lead either and surprisingly they sometimes had the highest approval rating as well. From that 10 player map the weakest civilizations seemed to be Mongolia (mainly because they might have started from a bad location on the map combined with their war mongering this was a weakness mainly because of wars with their neighbors Indonesia and Siam), Persia (overall poor military despite having many cities before they fell late in game), Arabia (possibly bad location on map in theory to help explain why they never had many cities), Assyria (similar to Arabia), and Ottoman Empire (mainly because they seemed to be losing against Siam late in the game). Also, Indonesia seemed to be struggling with literacy and gold coins as well despite having a descent number of cities late in game where they were behind even Assyria in Science; although, I never gave Gajah Madah any gold coins either.